Citizen K

Showings

Mary D. Fisher Theatre Fri, Feb 7, 2020 4:00 PM
Mary D. Fisher Theatre Sat, Feb 8, 2020 4:00 PM
Mary D. Fisher Theatre Tue, Feb 11, 2020 7:00 PM
Mary D. Fisher Theatre Wed, Feb 12, 2020 4:00 PM
Mary D. Fisher Theatre Thu, Feb 13, 2020 7:00 PM
Film Info
Event Type:Documentary Feature
Release Year:2019
Run Time:126 minutes
Production Country:Russia
Original Language:Russian
Subtitles:English
Trailer:https://youtu.be/cMUMNyJQHMA
Cast/Crew Info
Director:Alex Gibney

Description

Oscar-winning writer/director Alex Gibney’s revelatory “Citizen K” is an intimate yet sweeping look at post-Soviet Russia from the perspective of the enigmatic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch turned political dissident.


Benefitting from the chaos that ensued after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., Khodorkovsky was able to amass a fortune in financing and oil production and became the richest man in Russia. But when he accused the new Putin regime of corruption, Khodorkovsky was arrested, his assets were seized and following a series of show trials, he was sentenced to more than ten-years in prison.


Today, as an exile living in London, he continues to speak out against Putin’s two-decade stranglehold on power. Expertly researched and photographed, Gibney uses Khodorkovsky’s story as a way to explore the complex interplay between oligarchy and government and its destructive effect on democracy, in Russia and beyond.


Gibney conducted extensive interviews with Khodorkovsky and he remains as quick, canny and mercurial as he appears in the found footage shot during his heyday. The story took Gibney not only to London, but to Germany and inside various locations in Russia as well, where he spoke to Khodorkovsky’s former colleagues, foreign journalists who reported on the country’s fledgling attempts at democracy and backslide into dictatorship, and average citizens. It enabled him to construct a chilling, cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy in the face of endemic corruption and demagoguery in Russia and, by inference, how the story echoes across the globe.  
 

“Riveting. A scalding portrait of Putin’s Russia.” – The Hollywood Reporter


“A stunning must-see.” – The Times


“Engrossing.” – Screen Daily


“Absorbing. What a strange story, and it’s not over yet.” – The Guardian